Hi 'L'ers,
 
And so it goes.  Everyone seemed to have survived the
night, even if Mark Episcopatus hadn't moved.  I could
still see his siphon, and it even retracted a little occa-
sionally, so I took that as an encouraging sign.  As I
looked more closely at the cypraea erosa that Art had
staked out the night before, I couldn't see any mantle
exposed, so I decided to remove him from the tank and
give him a physical.  As I suspected, only an empty
cowry shell remained.  Looks like Art had his erosa
dinner after all!
 
Everything remained calm in the aquarium the rest of the
day.  The cowries stayed parked in the same spots, with
the arabicas at the top of the tank, Helmut Lynx in the
corner behind a clump of grass, and the others scattered
around at random.  As the evening wore on, I closed the
window blinds and turned out the aquarium lamp, and
waited to see if the action would pick up.  It did.
 
Within two minutes after extinguishing the light, Eduardo
came bursting out of the rubble, and headed straight for
Helmut without any hesitation.  I grabbed my camera,
and waited to see what would happen.  Eduardo crawled
directly onto Helmut's dorsum and extended his long,
red proboscis around the cowry's shell.  Helmut was still
completely retracted into his shell, but sensed immediately
that something was wrong.  He went from being totally
withdrawn to having his entire foot extended in a matter
of only two or three seconds (awfully fast for a cowry).
Helmut started trying to climb the glass, and indeed
was lifting the conus magnificus off the bottom, when
Eduardo moved his proboscis around to Helmut's head.
I thought, "This is it for poor Helmut," and snapped a
photo.  The rule that the act of observing an event may
actually affect its outcome certainly applied here, but
not in the same sense that the physicists would apply
it.  The flash stunned Eduardo for just a moment, long
enough for Helmut to gain an inch of vertical glass and
dump Eduardo off in the gravel.
 
Having narrowly escaped, Helmut cruised around the
tank the rest of the evening, never letting Eduardo get
near him.  Eduardo remained active, and followed
Helmut's trail for hours.  Several times he passed very
near the other cowries, but showed absolutely no in-
terest.  Eventually, Eduardo returned to the bottom
of the aquarium, apparently resigned to the fact that
this was not the day that he would catch Helmut.  He
sat feigning interest in a clump of branch coral until
I went to bed.
 
Art never resurfaced.  I'm not sure how long a conus
textile will remain buried after he's eaten, or even how
often they feed, but it looks like a good chance to find
out.  Tom did finally resurface, but never showed any-
where near the interest in chasing cowries that he
had shown the night before.  And Ross meandered
around the aquarium a bit too, but he also seemed
less than excited.  Maybe the lack of fresh cowry
trails everywhere made the not-quite-so-new surround-
ings seem more normal?
 
With things settling down and the cowries on patrol,
I decided to call it a night.  The only other thing I had
noticed was that my little puffer had now started to
follow the damsel fish's example, and had begun to
nip at both the cowries and the cones.  I decided to
remove him, and returned him to his ocean home.
 
The next morning when I took inventory, it was much
the same as the day before.  Eduardo and Art were
still buried, and so was Tom.  Even Mark was now
half-buried, about six inches from where he had spent
the past two days!  Only Ross was exposed, and
had the anterior part of his shell inserted into the
aperture of the juvenile cypraea talpa.  Helmut had
found a new perch at the top of the aquarium in one
of the front corners, and the other cowries were once
again distributed around the tank.  The only thing
that was amiss was a single, empty cypraea moneta
shell, obviously someone's meal from the night before.
 
Ross and the juvenile talpa were still in the same
positions late in the afternoon.  Curiosity finally got
the better of me, and I took my tongs and extracted
the talpa from the tank.  It was very dead, but only
half eaten.  I don't know if the fish had eaten on the
cowry, or some of the tiny hermit crabs, or if Ross
had enjoyed some success himself.  If Ross was the
perpetrator, he certainly didn't do the extraction job
that the molluscivorous cones usually do on cowries.
Then again, Ross is relatively small, and the cowry
fairly large.  He certainly seemed to have shown
some interest in the cypraea talpa, though, judging
by their positions, whether the cowry was living or
already dead.
 
Once again the daylight hours went by peacefully,
and only when the lights were out did the aquarium
come to life again.
 
(...to be continued...)
 
 
Cheers,
 
 
 
Don